"For most I shall be an enigma, but for few I shall be a poet." —Paul Gauguin

             

National Gallery of Art

Paul Gauguin, Self Portrait

Happy birthday to Paul Gauguin, born on this day in 1848. This "Self–Portrait," painted on a cupboard door from the dining room of an inn where he was staying in France, is one of Gauguin's most important and radical paintings. Around his floating head, Gauguin arranged a golden halo, two apples, a dark blue snake, and a curling vine—objects that served as personal symbols of the artist's mysterious world. Gauguin stated he had a "dual nature" and used the halo and snake to hint at his saintly and devilish sides. The apples allude to temptation.